Uline Inc. has seen massive, steady growth over the last decade in both physical space and new employees — and the company isn’t showing any signs of slowing.
In the past decade, the company had gone from around 3,000 employees to nearly 10,000, with workers spread across North America. That path will likely continue, Uline’s top human resources executive said, as the packaging supplies distributor continues to grow.
“While a lot of companies are experiencing quite a bit of instability, we’re actually investing and planning for continued growth here in southeast Wisconsin,” Uline Chief Human Resources Officer Gil De Las Alas said.
Construction is underway on a fourth building at its Pleasant Prairie headquarters location, as well as a 1.4 million-square-foot warehouse in Kenosha and a facility in Ohio. Uline is also hiring for hundreds of positions across North America, including 200 in Wisconsin, according to its careers website.
Uline distributes shipping, industrial and packaging materials to businesses throughout North America, and its key value proposition is next-day delivery. To support that, the business operates 13 regional hubs as well as its Pleasant Prairie headquarters, De Las Alas said.
The company sources products from various manufacturers, receives them all at its Pleasant Prairie facility and then ships them out to each regional hub, where they’re then picked and packed to fulfill daily customer orders, De Las Alas said.
The business stocks every item in its catalog in every warehouse across North America to help ensure next-day delivery to every customer, he said.
“(For) our customers, we’re almost kind of an extension of them — a virtual warehouse,” De Las Alas said. “A lot of them like it because they don’t then have to carry that inventory in the back or tie up their money in inventory.”
Although Uline’s growth has been steady over time, particularly since moving its headquarters to Pleasant Prairie in 2010, the company has seen “quite a bit of a surge” in growth since the pandemic and the massive growth of e-commerce.
One of Uline’s regional hubs is just down the road from its Pleasant Prairie headquarters, in the city of Kenosha. That facility ships products to customers in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and southern Wisconsin.
When it opens next year, Uline’s Ohio facility will be the company’s 14th regional hub. It’s also planning a 15th regional hub in Connecticut, according to Uline Senior Vice President of Real Estate and Construction Dmitry Dukhan.
Focus on Kenosha
Between its Pleasant Prairie facility and its Kenosha hub, Uline says it has around 3,800 employees in Kenosha County. It’s among the Milwaukee area’s largest private-sector employers, according to Milwaukee Business Journal research, with nearly 4,000 employees in the seven-county Milwaukee area.
Across North America, Uline has nearly 10,000 employees. Most are full-time, and the company generally does well at retention, De Las Alas said. Uline has a single-digit turnover rate for corporate employees, and its turnover rate for warehouse employees is an industry-leading 10% or 11%, De Las Alas said.
“Our goal in every community that we do business in is to be the top employer,” De Las Alas said. “For me, the best indicator for whether people like working for you is whether they stick around.”
De Las Alas said the packaging materials distributor plans to continue hiring thousands of employees annually to support its growth across the U.S., Canada and Mexico. But the current hiring market is still a challenge, and southeast Wisconsin is among Uline’s toughest areas to hire in due to competition from nearby employers, De Las Alas said.
Read more at the Milwaukee Business Journal.